NZ Entrepreneur

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

The number of local (AUS & NZ) billion dollar companies, as well as the rapid growth of publicly listed tech firms, is growing (Crossroads, 2020). While capital to large tech companies is increasing, smaller rounds for early-stage companies is drying up. Each stage of tech company growth has unique challenges.

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Developer Early Stage Later Stage Acquisition 68

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

2020 has turned out to be a really interesting test of what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. What I meant to say is 2020 has provided us a bunch of forced learnings around collaboration given that much of the tech world shifted from “mostly together in offices” to “mostly apart, at home, supported by software.”

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Early Stage Seed Stage Startup Software 146

View from Seed

APRIL 2, 2024

At the time, this metaphor really rang true and resonated with both founders and LPs. Similarly, I’d argue that the early-stage venture “product” has elevated across the board. The same can be said of the venture industry, but time shifted forward thanks for the covid-induced bubble in 2020 and 2021.

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Merger Non-Compete Early Stage Venture Capital 343

ConversionXL

MARCH 17, 2021

Last September (2020), six months after the 1st lockdown, my co-founder Vladimir Blagojevic and I decided to run market research to figure out what challenges B2B companies face and how they solve them. And while this was a good start, a significant position of these companies were early-stage startups. Let’s dive in.

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B2B Sales Cycle Belgium IP 150

Eric Friedman

MAY 1, 2023

The theme of becoming a better advisor has been a core principle of how I make decisions – from the people I choose to work with, companies I invest in, founders/execs I coach, and really what I do with my life. The pandemic had huge impacts on many, and at the time I didn’t feel comfortable sharing it openly as many do today.

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Technical Review Engineer Early Stage Operations 117

Eric Friedman

NOVEMBER 11, 2019

Company is a great fit: they host, advise, mentor, lend a shoulder, and provide a place to founders and teams. These things are right up my alley because it’s what I love doing and align with my goal to be the best advisor to early-stage founders. And all in the heart of NYC!

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Early Stage Hosting 60

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

We were excited to get to know Dispense’s co-founder & CEO Kyla Moore earlier this year. She and her co-founder, Tim Officer, launched the company in 2020, and even at this very early stage, Dispense has already helped a number of customers process more than $200M in GMV through their platform.

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Cofounder Early Stage B2B Software 234

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

Finance is a new, early-stage, New York-based VC focused on East Coast companies. s founder is David Teten , previously a Partner with HOF Capital and ff Venture Capital and a serial fintech entrepreneur with 2 exits. David is also Founder of HBS Alumni Angels of NY , the largest angel group on the East Coast.

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New York Venture Capital Technical Review Due Diligence 60

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2021

The sudden arrival of the global pandemic has shifted the playbook for founders and venture capitalists. As high-conviction, seed stage investors, we are inherently relationship-driven, and we value meeting exceptional founders face-to-face. billion in 148 funds for the first half of 2020.

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Venture Capital Cofounder Early Stage Seed Stage 350

David Teten

JUNE 10, 2020

SOP Capital is a new, early-stage, New York-based VC focused on East Coast companies. SOP’s founder is David Teten , previously a Partner with HOF Capital and ff Venture Capital and a serial fintech entrepreneur with 2 exits. David is also Founder of HBS Alumni Angels of NY , the largest angel group on the East Coast.

New York 60

New York Venture Capital Technical Review Due Diligence 60

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

We were excited to get to know Dispense’s co-founder & CEO Kyla Moore earlier this year. She and her co-founder, Tim Officer, launched the company in 2020, and even at this very early stage, Dispense has already helped a number of customers process more than $200M in GMV through their platform.

Cofounder 202

Cofounder Early Stage B2B Software 202

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

As an early stage investor in the world of gaming and metaverse technology at Remagine Ventures, I find these companies have the potential to set the agenda, become the potential platforms for developers building in this space and future acquirers/consolidators of startups building the next generation of the Internet. Here we go!

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

View from Seed

JULY 13, 2022

Founders: Carolina Nucamendi & Brenna Curran. Get to know the founders. RH: Founders, please introduce yourselves. CN: Carolina, Co-Founder and CEO. RH: What’s your favorite thing about being an early-stage founder? RH: Founders, please introduce yourselves. BC: Brenna, Co-Founder and CPO.

Early Stage 156

Early Stage Cofounder San Francisco Philadelphia 156

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

We were excited to get to know Dispense’s co-founder & CEO Kyla Moore earlier this year. She and her co-founder, Tim Officer, launched the company in 2020, and even at this very early stage, Dispense has already helped a number of customers process more than $200M in GMV through their platform.

Cofounder 156

Cofounder B2B Early Stage Software 156

Hunter Walker

MARCH 25, 2015

Firm founder Kirsten Green has an amazing analytical mind combined with empathy for the consumer. At the time, no one was investing in early stage consumer companies — it wasn’t a “thing” yet. How do you convey to founders why your backgrounds are valuable to them? EK: It’s a great question.

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Naming Technical Review Early Stage Green 48

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

The military awarded $445 billion in contracts in 2020. To attract interest the Defense Department is handing out unprecedented numbers of small contracts and in 2020 seeded 1,635 firms with more than $1.5 billion in early funding. Dozens of outreach programs across the military now offer quick revenue to early-stage companies.

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Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup China 326

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 17, 2020

Even in 2020, a difficult year by any measure, the Austin community has surpassed all of my expectations. On the entrepreneur side, founders like Brett Hurt and John Berkowitz have gone above and beyond for Breyer Capital. ai , a Breyer Capital early-stage investment, list on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Austin Silicon Valley Technical Review Texas 84

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 27, 2018

As part of The Startup Magazine founder interview series , we talked with Travis Batiza, the founder of AssuredLeads, a sales and marketing platform serving the insurance industry. My co-founder, Taylor Stinchfield, and I helped build a rapidly-growing insurance agency prior to founding AssuredLeads. Great advice.

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Founder Sales Cofounder Early Stage 98

Version One Ventures

JUNE 16, 2022

Early stage investing creates the best outcomes if you’re investing in non-obvious opportunities in markets that are early on their S-curve. When you invest as early as we do, it always comes down to the founders. 99.99% of the magic is created by founders and their teams.

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Early Stage Committed Capital Partner Founder 91

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

Here are a few of my favorites sampling techniques that I have seen work out well over the years: Take a job for a while with an early-stage startup. Founders stock and stock options are worth nothing for the first few years. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 01/24/2020.

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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Stock Options Flash 315

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

Founder Nathan Barry launched in 2013 to help creators sell their books and courses but failed to meet revenue goals and eventually stalled. Despite targeting its young user base with content that has little to do with insurance, Lemonade has grown to a base of 1 million users and posted $94 million in revenue in 2020 in six years.

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Marketing Product Audience Equity 110

View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2020

The simple truth is that all venture capitalists have told their portfolio Founder/CEOs that if they don’t absolutely need to raise capital now that they shouldn’t be out there attempting to do so. If founders must raise now, or soon, then there are three approaches to addressing the current situation. Wait until fall. Wait until 2021.

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Early Stage Venture Capital Portfolio Distribution 227

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

At Upfront we often talk about these as “shots on goal” (a fitting soccer analogy given the EURO 2020 tournament is on right now). Almost every successful company is a mixture of very hard work by the founders mixed with a pinch of luck, good fortune and perseverance. Early-stage venture capital is about extreme winners.

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Bankruptcy Bridge Financing Portfolio Angel Investor 294

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

In his vision for 2020 , Mark Zuckerberg said it’s likely that AR and VR will be the next major platform after the mobile phone. Mark Zuckerberg’s 2020 vision. I’ll finish with a small dose of AR in 2020 and what experts predict will happen in Augmented Reality this year.

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Demand Engineer Early Stage Global 203

Hunter Walker

MAY 25, 2020

As an early stage investor I look at A LOT of pitch decks. In the seven years since we started Homebrew there has been some evolution in this area – Docsend, videos, the occasional memo – but the lingua franca among founders and investors is still largely 10-25 slides with several expected sections.

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Early Stage Differentiation Video Conversion 174

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 31, 2022

It’s a tough time for a lot of startup founders right now. This is not meant to be a negative post, but rather a temperature check of today’s market environment and the levers founders can pull on to survive this period. The later the stage, the bigger the impact. What is a founder to do? billion in 538 deals.

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Founder Technical Review Down Round Liquidation Preference 173

ReadWriteStart

MAY 5, 2011

The smart home business is still in the very early stages in India, and it will take some time before Evolutech ramps up. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant, she writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy , and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020.

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Costa Rica Incubator Silicon Valley India 115

View from Seed

APRIL 2, 2020

Their focus is on talking to founders to understand what their specific business needs are in the immediate future and the coming months. Company A didn’t really plan to raise in 2020 and they have plenty of runway into 2021. Company B wanted to raise capital in 2020. There are three types of companies broadly defined.

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Partner Marketing Portfolio Early Stage 156

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates.

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Early Stage India Entrepreneur Illinois 116

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 14, 2011

a group of entrepreneurs from TiE Chennai gathered at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) Research Park campus, and we spent the next four hours discussing strategy and tactics of early-stage entrepreneurship. At 11 a.m., Recordings of previous online roundtables are all available here.

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India Technical Review Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 126

View from Seed

JUNE 10, 2020

of teams’ online pitch decks and recorded videos, as well as loved the dozens of second-round video conversations which we had with Founders working on quite compelling startups. Many of these Founders we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to connect with if we hadn’t launched this program.

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Cofounder Syndicate Syndication Alabama 177

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 9, 2020

Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars. Why it’s so hard to predict where we are going in 2020. Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars. Like this show?

Community 86

Community Cofounder Startup Venture Capital 86

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2020

Biggest Advice I Give to Portfolio Founders? I spoke about that more in this deck that I wrote for the SaaStr conference in early March 2020. Paying close attention to the psychology of founders. In short, many founders have “naive optimism,” which is to say “they don’t know what they don’t know.” In short: No.

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Marketing Valuation Churn Rate Balance Sheet 263

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

A founder asked me what makes a $2M round “pre-seed”? Pre-seed rounds accounted for 14% of all seed stage deals in 2023, up from just 5% in 2020 according to Pitchbook data and I predict it will be even higher in 2024. especially if the startup already has a product and revenue?

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Valuation Generative AI Software Review Technical Review 186

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Besides, there were a limited number of places where I could do my job in venture capital anyway—and while I might be a go to for a pitch from super early stage pre-seed and seed founders looking for quick answers and decisive term sheets in New York City, the reality is that I would be pretty far down the list in the Valley.

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Ukraine Russia Cap Table New York City 128

Austin Startup

JUNE 22, 2020

Far too often, founders spend inordinate time talking to angels and VCs trying to convince them of their vision, commitment and results. The phrase, “missionaries, not mercenaries,” applies just as equally to early-stage investors as employees. Originally published at [link] on June 22, 2020.

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Vertical Early Stage Forecast Revenue 64

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

” A great line uttered at dinner last night by one of the senior GPs at one of the best early stage funds. One question that’s been on my mind since we started Homebrew in early 2013 was whether seed venture would end up being multigenerational or not. In the 2020s will Homebrew be an anomaly?

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LP Early Stage Syndicate Syndication 92